atever
could be got in ships, troops, and money, and with these, if possible,
to give another turn to the war in Italy. Scipio could not prevent
this--his dismantling of the fleet now avenged itself--and he was a
second time obliged to leave in the hands of his gods the defence,
with which he had been entrusted, of his country against new
invasions. The last of Hamilcar's sons left the peninsula without
opposition. After his departure Gades, the oldest and last possession
of the Phoenicians on Spanish soil, submitted on favourable conditions
to the new masters. Spain was, after a thirteen years' struggle,
converted from a Carthaginian into a Roman province, in which the
conflict with the Romans was still continued for centuries by means of
insurrections always suppressed and yet never subdued, but in which at
the moment no enemy stood opposed to Rome. Scipio embraced the first
moment of apparent peace to resign his command (in the end of 548),
and to report at Rome in person the victories which he had achieved
and the provinces which he had won.

Italian War
Position of the Armies

While the war was thus terminated in Sicily by Marcellus, in Greece by
Publius Sulpicius, and in Spain by Scipio, the mighty struggle went on
without interruption in the Italian peninsula. There after the battle
of Cannae had been fought and its effects in loss or gain could by
degrees be discerned, at the commencement of 540, the fifth year of
the war, the dispositions of the opposing Romans and Phoenicians were
the following. North Italy had been reoccupied by the Romans after
the departure of Hannibal, and was protected by three legions, two of
which were stationed in the Celtic territory, the third as a reserve
in Picenum. Lower Italy, as far as Mount Garganus and the Volturnus,
was, with the exception of the fortresses and most of the ports, in
the hands of Hannibal. He lay with his main army at Arpi, while
Tiberius Gracchus with four legions confronted him in Apulia, resting
upon the fortresses of Luceria and Beneventum. In the land of the
Bruttians, where the inhabitants had thrown themselves entirely into
the arms of Hannibal, and where even the ports--excepting Rhegium,
which the Romans protected from Messana--had been occupied by the
Phoenicians, there was a second Carthaginian army under Hanno, which
in the meanwhile saw no enemy to face it. The Roman main army of four
legions under the two consuls, Quintus Fabius and